Yahoo! Planning Its YouTube Competitor Debut For Summer Launch

Yahoo is reportedly in discussions with video producers about plans to debut a video service that will go head-to-head against YouTube, the uber-popular video site owned by Google. People at Yahoo originally planned to unveil the rival service in April to advertisers, but ultimately needed more time to iron out some contract issues. The new plan is go live this summer.

According to Advertising Age, Yahoo's appeal to advertisers is that it's planning more lucrative revenue sharing deals than those currently offered by YouTube. The fixed ad rates Yahoo is proposing are supposedly much higher than YouTube's model, where Google reportedly skims 45 percent of ad revenue off the top.

Yahoo Dog is hoping for less cat videos on Yahoo's video service than there are on YouTube. Image Source: Flickr (jencu)

Numbers are hard to come by, but there are reports of Yahoo offering a fixed ad rate that is 50 percent or even 100 percent higher than YouTube's average net ad rate. Citing stats from video company Tubemogul, Advertising Age says YouTube averages a $9.68 cost per-thousand impressions before revenue sharing.

The service is said to be very similar to YouTube -- content creators will be able to have their own channel pages and host their videos, which can then be embedded on other websites. In addition, users who sign a contract with Yahoo will have access to a publishing dashboard, along with the ability to distribute their videos across various Yahoo properties, even Yahoo's home page and on Tumblr.

There's a caveat with that last part. Yahoo wants a perpetual license for any videos shared to Tumblr, which would basically give Yahoo ownership rights. That's not likely to fly with content creators and is one of the points being negotiated.